bulla ki jana ..

Weather blues ...

2008-05-23T16:10:00.003-04:00

Ok, so how does it happen every time? And I mean, every darn time! You plan a trip for weeks and weeks, you book hotels, you look for deals on car rentals, things to do, places to be, and BOOM - a day before you're supposed to leave, weather.com says - "chances of thunderstorms - 80%".

Eighty percent?!! It's already a flood out there even before leaving the city, and it seems like the thunderstorm is going to be following us wherever we go - hell, it's even coming back with us to Atlanta when we return!

Believe me, it's not only on the trips that weather has ruined things for me in the past. Last 3 months we had a tennis league where we used to play matches every Saturday. Guess what - it rained 6 of those 7 Saturdays!! And wasn't like it was raining every second day, or it was the rainy season here in Atlanta. No, no - it used to rain for 2 hours only on Saturday mornings!!

Oh by the way, the trip details -
destination - Miami
duration - 3 days
travel mode - driving (yes, even with gas @ $4/gallon!!)
travel mates - 5 tamilians :) (I need my ipod to survive not knowing the language :-D!)

I'll post some pictures if I get to take some! Happy long weekend everyone!

But Indians bargain!!

2008-05-15T18:48:00.009-04:00

I noticed that my last post was almost 3 months back! Wow, life has certainly changed a lot in these 3 months. First of all, my visa situation has been resolved a bit (it's still too complicated to explain!!), so I don't have to work outside US for 4 months. Though this means a lost chance for international travel, I can still travel within the US in the summer. The rest of the changes have been mostly related to where I live, what I drive (my old car gave up on me!!), and other not so interesting stuff. The interesting part, however, has been the transition. I had a crazy weekened last week selling everything in my apartment over craigslist. The most exciting bit, though, was selling my car.

Well, the car was a '95 model camry that I got as a student, and it was expected to give way sooner or later. Unfortunately, it happened sooner than I expected. One fine weekend while driving on the interstate, the car suddenly stopped responding to my coaxing, and came to a stop. I waited for a few minutes, called a few people for advice, and tried starting it again. This time, it went totally out of whack, and the engine started spitting out smoke!!

Well, at that point, I pretty much knew that was it! Called roadside assistance, took it to a mechanic, and that's when he gave me the inevitable news - "She's dead". Two words, and my 3 yr long relationship came to a crash. Heartbroken, I got it towed back home, hoping to have a burial ceremony with a nice little epitaph on the grave that would describe the way I felt about her - my first car :( The one I didn't give up on till her last day. For a while I thought I wouldn't be able to drive again.

But they say wounds heal with time, and they healed sooner for me cause my bro's newer (2007) camry was made available to me. But that's only because it was a camry - a bmw or a mercedes wouldn't have helped me get out of my mourning. So with a heavy heart, I started on a new journey, nurturing a relationship with someone else's car - it almost felt like cheating!

Anyhow, the days went by, and someone reminded me of the pending burial, but I could still not brace myself to the truth. That's when someone told me something about trying to sell it on craigslist. I knew it could be sold, but I wasn't sure if someone would take a car that has to be towed away - even if it was my sweetheart. And I wasn't sure that I wanted some sleazy auto dealer to lay his greasy hands on her!

But well, money being money, the suggestion was worth a shot, so one Saturday, after much deliberation on the right price, I put up an ad - "Excellent deal - 95 Camry going for $500".

5 mins, no calls.

10 mins, and I'm thinking, is it not even worth the miserly $500?

That's when my phone started ringing - "Hello, I'm really really interested in the camry - can I come in another 1 hr?"!! As I'm talking to the guy giving him directions, I missed 2 more calls - everybody wanted the car. So I rushed back to my computer, took off the ad, and posted a new one- "Excellent deal - '95 camry for $750".

5 mins, no calls. 10 mins - still waiting. 20 mins ... may be 600 was a better price. Finally after about 30 minutes, someone called. What a relief!! This guy also wanted to come the same day, so I gave him directions. Apparently, that call was just a start. The rest of the evening, my phone didn't stop ringing .. seems like there is a lopsided supply-demand for camrys' in Atlanta. Anyhow, the guy (who's name was Mike, but had a thick Asian accent), landed up at my place after abt 90 minutes (must have received around 20 calls during that time!).

After a thorough inspection, Mike (who was , by the way, Chinese) decided - ok, I'm gonna get it today! I told him - "fine, sold! you are the lucky one!" Then he said let me get the $500.

I looked at him - a bit surprised, asked him if he had checked the price online. He said yeah, but I want to take it for 500 bucks. I told him, bro, thanks but no thanks, it's either 750, or you go home empty handed.

The guy starts thinking, goes around the car again, starts up the car, calls up someone, makes them listen to what the car sounds like. I don't know how it helped, but after about 10 mins of shouting over the phone, he came to me very excited - ok fine, I'll take it. I'm like - ok cool I just want to get over with this today. Then he goes - I'll give you $600.

This time I was really pestered - I told him, man, either you pay $750, or you go home - don't waste my time! I started yelling at him - I was half hoping that he would say no, and I would put up another ad - "Excellent deal - '95 camry for only $1000"!!:) Well, he finally agreed, said we'll meet the next day and was off.

The next day when he started driving towards my place, he called me again - he's like, so I'm bringing the $700, are you at home?? This time he really touched a wrong nerve, and I was yelling and howling at him - "I told you 750, a penny less and I wont give you the car. Do you understand English? Not a penny less!!" He started apologising, saying ok fine whatever you say, I'll get you 750 then. I was totally irritated by the behaviour, so I had to ask what the matter was - did'nt he want the car?

He replied very sheepishly - "Actually I don't like bargaining too much myself, but a friend of mine told me that Indians bargain!!!"

Man, I haven't laughed harder in a long while.

"Indians bargain!!!!!!!"

Of course we do!!

BUT NOT WHEN WE ARE SELLING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And this, my friends, is how I sold my beloved for $750.

Those hot hot days!

2008-02-02T14:36:00.002-05:00

The two days in Grand Canyon were extremely tiring. For September, the heat was scorching, with the temperatures going up to 100 degrees around noon. Because the area is a desert, the weather is in the extremes. Late nights and early mornings are cold, and you need to wear a jacket. But around noon, even stripping down to your undies doesn't help!

We stayed in a youth hostel at Flagstaff, a small town about 2 hours drive from the canyon. It is about the closest you can live to the canyon if you are traveling on a budget. If you are ready to shell out more, then you can stay in the one of the lodges on the canyon and enjoy the sunrise/sunset from your room. Visitors are allowed to hike freely during the day, but for camping and overnight hikes you need a permit, for which you may have to apply a few months in advance.

We didn't have a permit, so we did two different day hikes. We realized the real worth of the permit when we had to miss out on going down to the Colorado river. It takes 4-5 hours to get down to the river, depending on the time of the day and your experience as a hiker, but it takes much longer to get back. It is also recommended that you don't hike for 2-3 hours around noon, because the heat can be deadly. So you really need 2 days for hiking and one night to camp to be able to enjoy the river.

Both our hikes started around 2pm as we went down the gorge, and both the days we were lucky to view amazing sunsets while returning. The gorge is very steep so it's tricky to figure out how much you should really descend, because an hour of walking downhill can mean 3-4 hours of hiking while coming back up. We went at a leisurely pace, not rushing ourselves, and that really is the way to enjoy the canyon. You need some time to take in the grandeur and the vastness of the place, and I was just dwarfed by a feeling of nothingness. It definitely does put into perspective your place in the universe - a tiny tiny speck!!

Grand Canyon!

2008-01-29T21:46:00.000-05:00

I made this trip last September - a trip to arguably one of the most visited places in the world. I'm sure my amateurish pictures cannot do justice to the grandeur of the scenery, especially when it has been so well documented by photographers.

Grand Canyon is in Arizona, in the middle of a huge desert. When making the drive, it takes you somewhat by surprise, because you don't expect such an immense gorge to appear suddenly in the middle of a vast flatland. And boy what a gorge - it is more than 1 mile deep at it's deepest point, where Colorado river flows. The river creates some of the best rapids going through the canyon.

I went with three friends from undergrad - all of us flew from the east coast of US and Canada. We spent 2 days in the canyon, and that was about all we could take of the heat and the repetitive scenery. I mean, it is beautiful, but no matter where you trek, the topology and the views are pretty much the same. And for 4 bachelors to return from grand canyon without a visit to Las Vegas (3 hours drive from GC), would have been an insult to our bachelorhood :)

I will write a bit more in detail about the treks in subsequent posts. The Vegas trip goes undocumented because as the saying goes - what happens in Vegas, doesn't get published online!

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow ...

2008-01-19T19:09:00.002-05:00

That's the song all over southeast America today!! In my 3 years in Atlanta, it is the first snowfall that I have seen, and boy, was it beautiful! Magical is the word really. I'm sure my friends up north don't consider it a big deal, but that's because when it starts snowing in the north east, it does not stop until April. But in Atlanta, knowing the fact that it is going to stay only for a couple of hours makes the experience much more enchanting.

Meanwhile, the year has been off to a great start with a lot of trips lined up. If everything goes as planned, then there is some international travel (South America may be??), some trips within the US, and a lot of exploration of India that is on the cards.

Though this is coming a little late, I wish everybody a great 2008, blessed with tons and tons of travel, adventure, time with family and loved ones, and moments that fulfill your destiny!

Glimpses: Medieval Europe

2007-10-18T23:15:00.003-04:00

Some glimpses from the older part of Switzerland. The first one is from inside Chateua de Chillon at Montreux - a french castle in the southern part of the country (adjoining France). The castle itself was good but not all that impressive - perhaps having seen monuments of great architectural grandeur constructed by the Mughals in India, I was expecting more. But the views from inside the castle were breathtaking. The castle opened out to a lake on 3 sides, and the alps can be seen in the backdrop.

The rest of the images are from the old part of Zurich. While most of the old houses in the area have been converted into restaurants and cafes (pic 2), there were still some residential homes in the area. And who can take a walk in old Europe without feeling awed by the medieval churches. The good thing about Zurich is the co-existence of the old and the new. The extremely cosmopolitan area near the main train station with all the banks and the malls etc., is just a stone's throw away from the oldest part of the town. They haven't allowed the history to rot in some forgotten section of the town. And that's something that we could take a lesson from in India :)

Jung Frau Joch

2007-10-14T23:10:00.002-04:00

Some pics from the highest peak in Europe. It's been a fun weekend, and though I promised I would write a lot more, I'm just going to sign-off with those pictures, and atleast keep my promise of having written here at all!

BTW, that trek was awesome - around 4 hours of breathtaking views. If you go there, make sure you walk some part of the distance - the train goes to the very top!

Backcountry Switzerland

2007-09-30T22:38:00.003-04:00

After postponing for months and months, I'm back to clearing my backlog on writing about my India/Swiss trip this summer. I spent one week in Switzerland before continuing on to India for 4 weeks. Even though 1 week wasn't quit enough to explore the whole country, it was just enough to get a taste of life in one of the most visited tourist destinations in Europe (and unfortunately, one of the most expensive ones too!!).

The swiss are known for their pride in the way they decorate their houses, the technical and artistic exquisiteness of their watches, their chocolates (especially dark chocs), and last but not the least, their finely cut suits and dresses. All of the above traits are visible all over the country - be it the extremely cosmopolital Zurich, or the backcountry in Luzern, Bern or any of the older towns. The country is very well connected through a public transport system consisting of trams, buses, railways, cable cars, and boat rides! A travel pass entitles you to all the above listed means of transport, and considering the amount of money we have to pay for public transport in the US, it is really very economical. The best way to explore the country is to get a 1 week travel pass, trek in the back country during the day, and come back to a bigger city like Zurich, Lausanne, Geneva etc. at night. I spent one night in a youth hostel in Zurich, and the remaining 4 days with a friend who goes to school in Lausanne. The major touristy area is Interlaken - and it is so with good reason. The highest and the most beautiful mountains of Europe are in this area, with Jung Frau Joch touching around 4700m. The swiss have done a great job of promoting tourism in the area - there's a train that goes upto around 3600m from where you get perfect views to Jung Frau peak!! I did a trek down from that height, and it was nothing short of amazing. The mountains in the area are lush green, and it seems like they are being taken care of by gardeners coz the grass is almost evenly cut all over the region.

Above are some pics from my trek in the countryside in Luzern (about 1 hr from Zurich), and will post the pics from Jung Frau in my next posting.

North Georgia Mountains!

2007-07-22T18:41:00.001-04:00

It already seems like ages since I made any trips (and the India trip was just a month back!!). The routine of life has taken over so quickly, that all the resolutions I made about changing my outlook towards life - all the richness of experiences that moved me while traveling, have been almost forgotten. I guess that's why all the explorers and adventurers have this almost physical urge to get out of their normal routine life and travel. And I guess that's what's described as travel lust in the dictionaries :)

Well last week I was seized by travel lust once again, and off I was with a bunch of friends and family. After traveling alone to Switzerland and India for more than a month, this was a pleasant change. There was 12 of us as we headed towards the mountains of north Georgia/southern Tennessee for a weekend of camping and river rafting.

Being such a large group, and of course all of us being Indians, it was almost impossible to have started at the time that we originally fixed for our departure!! I guess we Indians have a decent workaround this problem - just stipulate the time for around an hour or so earlier than you actually intend to leave, and everbody's happy. The amazing thing is that in spite of us being 12 people, I think all of us got ready around the same time (being equally late by more than an hour), thereby confirming the fact that the concept of IST (Indian Stretchable Time) works out very well if the group is all Indian. If you have even a single non-Indian in the group, well, then they have to learn the lesson the hard way by waiting up :)

Anyways, it was a nice pleasant evening drive up the hills - which are somehow not the part of the Smokey mountain range but are geographically located very close to them, as to the famous Applachian trail (that runs from Georgia in the south to Maine in Boston in the north - look up the map for east coast of the US). We reached the campsite at around 9pm - when most of the other campers in the area had already BBQ'd and were putting out fires and getting ready to sleep, we were putting up our tents, and looking for firewood for cooking :-D. Somehow we got done with dinner by midnight (and we already had a ranger give us a warning about making too much noise). That's when someone(*) had the brilliant idea of telling ghost stories to each other. All of us gathered around 2 candles in one tent, and slowly but surely the stories started pouring out. By around 2:30 am, all the brave souls in the tent could be given a shock treatment by the
sound of the wind against the leaves, or someone's palms against the tent, or even a cockroach walking blissfully on the tent unaware of the effect it was creating (that was me who woke up at 4am and figured it was a cockroach and not some blood-thirsty vampire lol).

Somehow everybody made it through the night - ALIVE, and it was time for some adventure. We started with a game of volleyball, which soon became so rowdy that we had to end it at one game apiece. We left for Ocoee river after that for an afternoon of river rafting. Having done rafting on the Ganga in India, I wasn't very excited about rafting in the US, as I had been told that the rapids on the Ganga are some of the best in the World. I was pleasantly surprised with the rapids on Ocoee, and also with our raft guide, who made sure we had fun being absolutely drenched! And I, the only one who had some rafting experience in our raft, was the only one who fell into the water while we were traversing one of the rapids. The coolest thing was that someone was clicking pictures from the bank when I fell into the water, so I have an almost slow-motion record of my fall in the water (and I also know who all in the raft tried to help me, and who all were laughing their asses off!!). I'll post those pictures in an update to this post.

All in all, excellent trip - the best kind of fun that you can get in the US (with all the concerns for safety surrounding EVERYTHING adventure related).

(*) That someone's my Bhabhi (brother's wife), but I didn't want to take names in the middle of the blog :-D. But I guess that was one of the best ideas of the trip for the amount of fun we had coz of it - in spite of the shivers!!

Nubra Valley - A desert at 3500 metres!!

2007-07-01T00:55:00.001-04:00

Continuing the motorbiking trip, we started out for Nubra Valley on the 4th day in Leh. Nubra Valley is about 120km from Leh, and the variety in the landscape for that short a distance is astounding. You start with the barren mountaints surrounding Leh, climbing up to the world's highest motorable road - the Khardung La pass - which is 40 km from Leh. The ascent is steep - within those forty odd kilometres the road climbs more than 2000 m (Leh is at 3500m, Khardung La is at 5660m!). The road is in a surprisingly good condition for the first 30 of these kilometres, and extremely bad for the remaining 10!! Some pictures from the ascent to Khardung La ..

To give you an idea of the road conditions near Khardung La, sometimes there were streams flowing across the road that had knee deep water. You need some skill in motorbiking to negotiate those without getting your feet wet! The trick is to accelerate just before the water-body, and then once you enter the stream, slacken the acceleration and let the momentum carry you through. I got my shoes wet a couple of times before disovering the trick (and that, believe me, was NOT very pleasant!!):)

The air at Khardung La is extremely thin, and 5 minutes of walking at that height had me gasping for breath. There were tons of tourists who had driven from Leh, and majority of them were Indian tourists who usually never get to see the snow. There's nothing much to do at Khardung La though - the place just has a small army camp, and a budhhist temple (other than all the snow, which people were busy digging into for the snow fights :). Met a bunch of people from NZ and Spain who had come there haveing hauled their bikes on the taxi, and they were planning to bike down the distance to Leh. Good idea - I would never do that distance biking uphill! Some pictures ..

Pictures from Nubra Valley follow - observe the change in the landscape after the descent from Khardung La. The colors change from white, to barren brown of the mountains, to green of the villages, to the brown of the sand-dunes in Nubra Valley. YES, there are sand-dunes at the height of 3500 m. Heck, they even have camels!! You don't believe me? That's why I clicked pictures for you :)

Above is a small village - it's interesting how the locals judiciously use water for irrigation to produce Barley (which is the principal crop of the area). The region gets 4 inches of rainfall a year - to keep things in perspective, the year Bombay had floods it got 37 inches of rain in one day. So 4 inches of rain means there's always an acute shortage of water. The locals use the water that melts from the snow (that's the streams we encountered on the roads) and very amiably divide that between their fields. The result is the occasional extremely green patch of land that you see, and it signifies habitation - otherwise the whole area is absolutely barren.

Camels in Nubra Valley!! And no, they haven't been brought from Rajasthan! These are the local camels, and notice the amount of fur they have on them to protect them from the harsh winters (as well as the harsh sun in summers!). They are special double-humped camels (the ones in Rajasthan are single-humped) that are found in only 2-3 other places in the world (or that's what the locals told me).

Those are 2 trucks in the middle of a road in the middle of a huge huge desert. Amazing, isn't it?

In and around Leh

2007-06-23T13:39:00.001-04:00

It's been a week in the

now, and what I thought I would post in the first 2-3 days is still overdue. A new job, a new set of people to work with, new place to live, new roommates (well still searching for new roommates!!) - all have contributed to the delay. I need to utilize this weekend to clear up the backlog.

So having made the trip from Manali to Leh in the last post, it's time for in and around Leh. The city of Leh is like an oasis in the desert. After being on the road for 18-20 hours on empty and deserted roads, the city welcomes you with a buzzing life of a foreign tourist centre. Mind you, it's not noisy, and the traffic is also not bad either (though people were saying it's worsened over the last few years) ... but after the Manali to Leh roadtrip, which has only one "town" on the way, Leh seems like you're finally returning to civilization.

Day 1

On the first day, all I could do was sleep (on my stomach!!!!), and rest my butt. The guesthouse I was staying with Obi was excellent considering the amount of money we were paying for it - Rs 300 per night for a double room. It's amazing how all the hotels at the hillstations where Indian tourists throng are so expensive (check out Shimla or Manali), but the foreign tourist destinations are cheap (say for example Vashisht near Manali, and Leh!). The guesthouse owner in Leh (Ser-Dung guesthouse) was attributing it to the facilities that the Indian tourists demand - Air-conditioning, TV with all the cable channels, western style toilets etc. Compared to that, most guesthouses in Leh are pretty bare - the rooms are clean and tidy, but bare with respect to facilities. I didn't mind that coz in any case for most part of the day I was out of the room.

Anyways, in the evening on the first day, we (Obi and me) went to the Shanti Stupa, which was a newly built structure a couple of kilometres from the town centre, and it overlooks the city. The views were very nice especially as we went at sunset.

Day 2 and Day 3:

We spent the two days figuring out the logistics for planning out a trip to Nubra valley. We wanted to rent bikes and drive to the valley, which is around 120km from Leh. You need to have permits from the DC (Distric Commissioner) office because that area has restricted entry as it borders with China. Apparently, something that we thought should take us 1 hour, took us almost a day. There was some weird rule on how a foreign tourist cannot get the permit if in a party of less than 4 people. And like everything in India, the travel agencies have a way around it. We found a guy who runs a travel agency, and he had told us he would get us the permits for Rs 200 (they are free if you go directly to the DC office). What he did was - he had three fictitious passports and visas (fictitious as in they were real people, but had travelled to Leh probably 2 years back) - and he clubbed Obi's name with them to make it a party of four. So Obi got his permit with 3 other people who were probably in Europe, Australia or the US!

To add to the problems, we ran out of money. Well not exactly - what happened was that Obi's debit/ATM card didn't work at any of the outlets in Leh coz it wasn't a MasterCard or Visa. Both of us had to buy airtickets to fly out of Leh - so I converted all the cash that I had (around $200) and we pooled in all our money to buy the tickets. After we bought the tickets, we had a total of Rs 400 amongst the two of us!! In the meanwhile we had figured out a way to get Obi's money - he called up his gf, actually his ex-GF, to tranfer some NZ dollars via Western Union. But because the tranfer takes a day, we were left with Rs 400 for the day. By the evening, we were left with Rs 100 (after a few phone calls to NZ for getting the money transferred), and we were yet to have dinner! As luck would have it, we ran into Remi, the French guy - and we had to ask him to sponsor our dinner. He was gracious enough to oblige us after belittling us for a while :)

We did rent out bikes on the afternoon of the third day, and we went to see some monasteries around Leh. Some glimpses ..

Glimpses - Manali to Leh

2007-06-17T22:30:00.001-04:00

For all the advice that I got from people about traveling from Manali to Leh, I was still grossly unprepared. No no - I had all the pills for AMS (Acute Mountain Sickness), I had stuff for motion sickness, and I was even prepared for an upset stomach in the case of diarrhoea. But what I really needed, and what nobody told me that I would need so bad, was ... A CUSHION! Yes, that's what I mean - just a pillow or a cushion - or just something that takes all the bumps as a shock absorber. Because after 21 hours of riding a rickety Sumo on one of the world's toughest roads, my condition was worse than that of Sameer (Saif Ali Khan) in Dil Chahta Hai after he hitches a ride from Bombay to Goa on a truck. Hell it was worse than having 3 GPL's one after the other (if you don't know what GPL is, search for GPL and IIT Kanpur lingo on Google!). Anyways, it took me 3 days to recover before I could rent a bike and brace myself to being a road warrior again.

Anyways, coming back to the journey - it was a 21 hour marathon run which started at 2 am and finished at around 11 pm!! The driver took 3 breaks of around 20 mins each - other than that it was non-stop driving, rickety roads, loud music, and continuous charas smoking (not to mention the middle-aged guy behind me who would fall on my shoulders every few minutes coz he would fall asleep!!). So the taxi works this way: you pay according to the seat you want - the middle row seats are the highest - I paid Rs 1600 for mine in the middle row next to the window. Next come the front seats with the driver, and the cheapest are the 4 seats in the back (and you really need to have a stomach of a devil to not feel sick on those 4 seats). I had great company in the middle row - a frenchman and a kiwi. The Kiwi (his name was Obi) would be my travel partner for the next 5 days. The Frenchman, Remi, was a journalist in France, and was in Leh on a 4 month contract with a trekking agency to accompany French tourists on treks in the area - how I envy the guy - getting paid for trekking in some of the best trek routes in the world!!

Well to cut a long story short, I'll just have to present some pictures, because the beauty of the area is indescribable in words!!

This is the first stop that we made after starting from Manali - right after Rohtang Pass.

Some shots that I took from the Sumo ..

Can you believe that!! That's THREE HUNDRED AND SIXTY FIVE KILOMETRES!!!

Some more shots ..

That's Darcha - yes thats all of Darcha, one of the places for which we kept waiting 2 hours, and for which we were seeing milestones for about 70 km.

Just to give you an idea of how wide the road was ..

Some parting shots ..

Road warnings in Ladakh ..

2007-06-17T00:42:00.002-04:00

.. are, well, hilarious to say the least. Most people in India have seen the ubiquitous "Speed Thrills But Kills" signpost amidst the speeding trucks and buses, and you might have seen some funny stuff written at the back of the trucks, but the official road warnings put up by the BRO (Border Roads Organisation) beat them all, probably just because of the fact that they are "official". Take for example - "Without hurry, no worry". Or - "With Whiskey, Driving is Risky". I wonder who writes all this stuff. Do they have like people sitting in the government thinking up all these 2 liners? :)

Below are some that I captured on camera, so you wouldn't think I was making them up (and there was a good chance you would have thought so!!)

Ummm, isn't that a little sexist, considering the number of women drivers in the country?

Another one on liquor - what they really need are some posts warning against driving while being high on "Charas" - I think 90% of the taxi drivers in the area smoke charas while driving (Charas is the name given to hand-made hashish in India and Pakistan. It is made from the extract of the Cannabis plant ( or Marijuana )).

But below is my personal favorite - this one had me laughing for about 5 km!!

More pics coming up from the Manali to Leh drive, and the Nubra Valley trip!!

Internet in Leh ...

2007-06-08T10:48:00.001-04:00

... sucks big time :( It's slow, it's expensive, and half the time there's no electricity so the UPS keeps beeping. I'll have to write about the journey from Manali to Leh, and the time I've spent motorbiking in Leh once I get back to the US. For now, the plan is to leave for Nubra Valley early tomorrow morning (on bikes), and spend two days there. I'll be back in the civilized world on 11th, when I fly from Leh to Delhi. Till then - ciao!!

Another day, another waterfall :)

2007-06-01T10:07:00.002-04:00

Another day in Manali, and I don't feel like leaving the place - ever! It's been two laid back days hiking around the remote hills (yes - there are still remote hills in Manali!!), and two days when I really had time to myself. Strange I was worried I would get lonely traveling solo on this trip! In fact, being alone has given me the advantage to seek company when I want to have a conversation, while immersing myself in a book or just the scenery when I'm not.

Went to sleep really late last night - didn't go to any party but there were a few people hanging around the guest house talking about ... well talking about just random things flitting from topic to topic, but it was interesting just because of the diversity of the participants in the conversation - a Pole, a Swede, 3 other Indians all from different parts of the country, and myself. Everbody had interesting travel stories to share, and the Europeans had seen more of the country than all 4 Indians put together :)

Woke up finally at 8 in the morning, had a quick bath in the shared bathroom (I had to wait for 30 minutes, and believe me, it wasn't pleasant!), had a quick breakfast, and I was out for the morning's hike at 11 :) The weather was perfect - nice and sunny. Met a Bengali family with their 2 kids who were traveling with their Punjabi driver - like any typical Indian family on vacation they had gone from one sightseeing point to another, and clicked pictures at all those places, and had therefore exhausted Manali in 2 days flat. Probably I'm generalising here, and probably this is true for ALL families and not only Indian families, but since I've had the most experience with Indian families, I can only talk about them. Probably you'll see me doing the same in another 10 yrs with a wife on the arm and 2 tiny tots following us, but that's the reason I want to avoid that stage for as long as possible :)

Anyways, after the Indian family, I met up with four beautiful damsels from Israel (darn why didn't I take a picture!!!!!!). Had a long and interesting conversation with them about the Israel-Palestine problem, and Judaism in general. All four of them were 21-22 yr's old, and had just completed their compulsory military service, and were traveling for 3-4 months before going back to Israel to join university etc. The interesting thing about the whole discussion was that though they all agreed that all the violence was killing a lot of innocent people, and they were fed up of traveling within Israel and being roughed up by the security people at the entrance of all malls, hospitals, schools, colleges (YES - they had airport type security EVERYWHERE!) etc., but when I asked them why don't you guys stop fighting then, all of them said in almost a chorus that it's not we who are fighting, it's them. And I'm pretty sure that people on the Palestinian side have the same opinion.

Well we couldn't have solved the Palestine problem in one trek, so we said goodbye's and I walked a little more to find a good spot to read. No Barnes and Nobles or Borders could have beaten the ambience - lying under a tree near the top of a mountain with 360 degree views of the snow capped mountains - it cannot get better than that. If I had been a Tagore it was the perfect spot to produce Gitanjali!

After 2-3 hours of reading, I carried on with the trek to the waterfall, and well I'll leave the description to the pictures. I met a British guy and a girl on the way back (they said they weren't a couple - so I have to say they were a guy and a girl :), and we started talking about Indian religions, culture, food etc., and before we knew it we were back to our village (Vashisht). Because the conversation was still not over, we completed it over cups of Chai with Paneer Pakoras. Well the conversation is still now over, and we're supposed to get together after dinner around 9, and watch some movie which we will decide at my guest house. Joy (the keeper of the guesthouse - Sonam Guesthouse), is very friendly and he's always looking to meet new people - so we'll get together and ask him to put on some good foreign language movie in the TV room.

And coz it's already 8:30, I better rush to get some dinner before everybody starts getting together for the movie. Did I tell you this place feels like home? :)

The First Day in Manali

2007-05-31T10:18:00.001-04:00

Finally, the Himalayas!! I'm back in the Himlayas after 3 years, and it seems like a long long time. But the way weather behaved today, it seemed to be a welcome for me :) Reached Manali at 10:30 in the morning from an overnight bus from Chandigarh. The semi-deluxe bus was much more comfortable than I expected, and it took roughly 10 hours from Chandigarh. I had looked up some of the tentative places I wanted to stay at from the Lonely Planet guide, and a place called Vashisht - a village 4km north of Manali - seemed to be perfect. The village was supposed to be in the wilderness, away from the hustle bustle and traffic of the main city. Well, the village does not have the hustle bustle of Manali, but the traffic seems almost that bad. The only saving grace is that if you walk 2 mins you are at some trail that will lead you to the wild.

So the hotel - well it would be an overstatement to call it a hotel, it's more like an old wooden guest house. It's called Sonam Guesthouse, and the rooms are clean but old, and the bathrooms are shared. The major positive is the rent - 120/- per night!! Not to mention the friendly keeper (his name is Joy) who helped me find a cheap internet place, and the friendly Swiss couple who's living in the room next door (and who came on the same bus as me from Chandigarh). The place has a TV room which the keeper insists on calling cinema room, and they have around 35-40 odd movies which you can watch, and write on a board outside as to what time you are going to watch that movie so other people can join you. All in all, a decent place to live - expecially for someone traveling alone and looking for company.

So I tried getting a couple of hours of sleep, and it was lunch time. Had lunch at the roof of World Peace Cafe :) They have wonderful views, and I was surprised at the variety of cuisine they serve! They had Italian, Spanish (YES - Burrito's!), French, Chinese and Indian. I just sampled tofu with rice which was written under the Chinese section, and though it didn't taste quite Chinese, it was pretty decent. Also, the ambience was wonderful - they have seating on the ground with cute bench like tables to have your food on.

After lunch I went for a short hike uphill which was supposed to take me to a waterfall. The hike was very steep, and I was soon regretting all the excercise that I did NOT do the last couple of weeks. But the views made up for all the hard work - it was cloudy and the snowy peaks were covered with a tinge of grey. I walked up as close to the waterfall as the trail allowed me (which was still quite a distance). After a while it started raining, and I had to take shelter under the backyard of a house. The experience was somewhat spiritual - the weather, the mountains, the clouds, the trees, the vegetation - everything played it's part in creating that ambience where all you can do is be thankful for that moment. I tried capturing some of it in pictures, but even pictures don't do justice!

Good night for now - time for dinner, and might go for a party that Joy told me about :)

Traveling solo ...

2007-05-28T06:47:00.001-04:00

Just 2 more days to go for the trip I have been looking forward to for so long - Leh!! The biking trip has been converted to a trekking, hiking, and reading/relaxing trip coz of some friends who ditched me at the last moment (Sumeet I'll never forget to remind you this for the rest of your life!!). Neverthless, I'm still excited at the prospect of being in the Himalayas after a long long long time. And I'm excited about traveling alone!

Now my parents, and family, and relatives, and friends etc etc all seem to think that a trip up in the mountains alone is not a good idea, coz it will get boring after a while. But the 2 days I spent in Switzerland exploring the area alone has opened my mind to the idea of traveling without any companions. I actually observed more and took in more of the scenery while traveling alone versus when I was with Ashutosh, where our heated conversations would overpower the scenery!! Not to say that I didn't have fun being with a friend - it is just that probably some conversations are better had when you are in a dimly lit apartment in the middle of the night.

I'm taking 5-7 books with me, and I plan to spend some time relaxing in Manali (2 days), and then in Leh (3 days), apart from the traveling that I'll do around Manali and Leh. I also plan to travel to Pangong Tso lake, and spend another day or two doing small treks in the area. I'm looking forward to meeting other travelers who were ditched by their friend, and are therefore traveling alone :)

And I'm still due with all the pictures and the stories from the Swiss trip - seems like I'll have to wait till I get back to the US to do that - the internet conn in the cyber cafe I use is awefully slow!! I'll try some other place and see if it's fast enough to upload pictures. Till then - bubye!

Violence in Punjab

2007-05-18T02:14:00.001-04:00

It's frustrating when you fly halfway across the world to travel, and stupid people fighting over non-issues hold up your plans :( Punjab has been sealed from three sides, and my plans to travel to Himachal have been held up as the situation is too volatile to take a risk. I'm not sure if the ground situation is really that bad - I'm sitting in a cyber cafe in the heart of Ludhiana city right now, and it seems like any normal day. And yet you switch on Star News and they keep repeating some images that would make any normal person believe that Punjab is on fire. I think if the media shuts up for a while, everything will be normal; they're adding fuel to a small fire which is escalating the issue.

Predominantly it is a political issue, because whatever caused the disturbance (the Saccha Sauda Dera chief wearing robes similar to Guru Gobind Singh and administering a ceremony similar to the Amrit ceremony for the Sikhs) has happened a lot of times before. The reason why it didn't have the effect earlier as it had now is probably because no political party could have drawn any political mileage out of it. This time around it was different with different parties at the Centre and the State. It's being potrayed in the media that it's two different parties (the Akali's and the Congress) backing two communities in the dispute (the Sikhs and the Dera followers); whereas it is actually these two parties who are pushing the people to fight (and not just backing them). In fact, the way things stand in Punjab right now, Akali Dal is not even a representative of the Sikhs, but they seem to be giving statements on behalf of the Sikhs enticing people towards violence. And the same's true for the Congress.

I hope the situation does not get worse, because the Congress wants an excuse to dismiss the Akali government, and for that they just have to prove that the conditions are bad enough to put Punjab under President's rule. In fact the Dera followers have been shouting slogans in front of media cameras -"We want President's rule". And most of them aren't even in Punjab - they were standing in the Dera in Haryana!! Makes you wonder whether it's a religious issue or a political one.

Punjab has suffered a lot in the last few decades with violence - the last thing anybody wants here is more bloodshed. Will the political parties realize this and stop instigating violence?

The Swiss Trip - 1

2007-05-17T07:37:00.000-04:00

It's been 2 days in India, and the heat has already started to make me forget the 5 days in Switzerland! I guess that's one thing about travel blogging - you have to write when you are in the middle of it, while you are experiencing things, because once you've lost the ambience, it takes very little time for the experiences to be lost from the mind as well. I would love to hear from other bloggers on how they keep up with writing while traveling, as I had problems in finding time (as well as internet access!!) while in Switzerland.

About the trip - amazing! Europe is a totally different experience than the US. The first thing that really hit me was the diversity. Now most people are going to raise eyebrows as you wouldn't expect this comment from someone coming from the US. But the diversity in US is different in a lot of ways. Even though everybody is an immigrant in the US, people tend to leave their culture and language at home, and adopt this culture called "Americanism". So while you would find people from "n" different countries at a given workplace, you wouldn't hear "n" different languages as everybody speaks only English. Also the body language, the topics to talk about, the slangs used etc. all become similar for everybody just because everybody is trying to fit in.

With Europe, well, I'm not sure if this is a European thing or a Swiss thing, you go from one part of the country to the other by a 1 hour train journey, and the official language changes. This is similar to India where we have atleast 50 different languages, but the unique thing about Swiss was that most people could speak all the languages prevalent in the country. That would amount to an average person knowing 3 languages other than English! That's some way towards globalisation!! In fact I met a 15 yr old in the train who actually knew 7 languages, and he hadn't counted English in those 7 as he thought he didn't speak it that well, even though he was almost as good (or bad!) as me.

Apart from the diversity, I found the people to be very friendly. That was surprising, especially because I expected more stares due to my appearance (the beard and the turban which are a part of my religion, Sikhism - people tend to mistake me for an orthodox Muslim in the US, and orthodox Islam is not something you want to be associated with these days!). I guess that's one offshoot of diversity - accepting people for who they are rather than judging them by their appearance. Well all was not goody goody all the way, but it was much much better than the US.

The people's dress sense - I guess that needs another blog entry! In Switzerland, even when someone is going out for a run or a hike, they would dress up extremely appropriately for the occasion. And the number of people in suits that I saw when I went out for dinner at a budget/low-end restaurant made me feel out of place in my faded jeans and t-shirt. While walking in Zurich, I don't remember seeing a single person wearing loose or ill-fitting clothes - someone told me that its a Swiss thing, to wear neatly cut and well tailored clothes! The clothes were expensive though - I saw a handwoven pair of jeans for Sfr 1500 (almost USD 1350)!! Some price to pay for nicely cut clothes :)

My trip itinerary was as follows: Day 1 - land in Zurich, get a room in the youth hostel, and trip to a nearby hill station Oetliberg; Day 2 - trip to Lucerne (called "Luzern" in German), a small city at the foothills of Alps, and a train ride to Lausanne in the evening; Day 3 - travel to the Interlaken area, and trip to the Jungfraujoch (the highest train station in Europe); Day 4 - explore areas around Lausanne and Geneva; Day 5 - train ride back to Zurich to catch the flight to India at 3:30 PM.

I'll write in more detail in the next post, in which I'll have additions from travel within India. There has been some change to my original plans of traveling in Punjab coz of the ongoing voilence between the Dera Sachha Sauda and the Sikhs - mindless political games which are hurting the innocent local people. Hope the situation clears up soon!

And the journey begins ...

2007-05-09T03:52:00.000-04:00

Another morning, another move from an apartment, end of another era, and yes, yet another trip! I fly out to Europe at 4:45 PM tomorrow, and will be in Switzerland from 10th to 14th May. Ashutosh (a friend from undergrad who everybody *lovingly* calls guptaji) is waiting with his entourage of desi friends to show me around the place and treat me to the desi dinners that are ubiquitous all over the world and know no national boundaries :)

I'll try to keep the blog updated - depends on where and when I get internet access. It does not seem like the youth hostel that I'm staying at in Zurich (www.youthhostel.ch) will have internet access, but I'm just glad to have found a place that cheap in Zurich. I'm there for only one night, and after that I'm with Gupta the whole while (and hence, not paying for boarding/lodging!).

Now I really should get some sleep - will need that for all the last minute errands that I have to run in the day (it's 4 am in the morning right now!!)

Changes changes ...

2007-05-04T02:30:00.000-04:00

Well after what seemed like an eternity, I'm going to be awarded another degree this Saturday. I'm supposed to be elated, on top of the world, happy and all those good things, but somehow all I can think about is finishing up work, and packing for the month of traveling ahead (YES, I'm traveling to India - AGAIN!).

Had been lazy about finishing up things, and now the situation calls for such drastic action that I might have to work/plan/pack while cutting down my sleep to just a couple of hours. I guess subconsciously I wanted this week to be this hectic so that the trip to come feels like a vacation - coz otherwise I was on some sort of a vacation for the last 4 months :)

Anyways, time to hit the sack - but keep checking out my blog during the next 1 month - I'll try to keep things updated here about the trip to Switzerland, Punjab and Leh (looks like a cocktail of places to visit in a month!!). And yeah, about the rest of the posts on the wedding, I'll try to chuck in a an hour or so to clear the writing backlog!

The MBA types

2007-04-27T21:25:00.002-04:00

Haven't posted here for a while, and the short hiatus was due to the end of the semester rush. Now that everything seems to be all set for my graduation, I have time to sit back and look back on the time.

From my time at Tech (as well at IIT), the classes that I'm going to remember are surely all the management and the humanities classes. While both my grad and undergrad degrees were at 2 of the techiest (I'm not even sure if that's a word, but that sure conveys the meaning!) schools in US and India, the management and the humanities classes were supposed to provide enough spice to balance out the geeks. While I'm not sure if we really had that many geeks (considering the varied professions my batchmates from IIT are into right now), the courses still did a very good job.

Apart from their apparently important role as discussed above, the management classes were a very interesting ground to observe the students who came from varied backgrounds. Even though I'm not a big fan of generalizations, preliminary observations in a couple of classes could help you figure out the background of a particular student (if you were a keen observer :).
For example, the students in a management class (atleast at Georgia Tech) can be (roughly) divided into the following categories:

1. The engineering student taking his first management class: Most innocent and naive of the lot, this student can be seen looking with awe and amazement at the other more experienced students in the class who are raising their hand at every other question that the professor asks to provide their opinion on and participate in the "class" discussion. The student is wondering where he has been all these years, whether he's been living in the same world as the others who seem to talk of product-process lifecycle, NIBT, ROI's etc. as if those were their first words when they were born instead of mama-papa. The student is making notes so that he can look up the terms on wikipedia, while also making resolutions to start reading the economist, the wall street journal and any other hep sounding business magazines on a daily basis, devoting 30 minutes to each magazine.

2. The engineering student taking his nth management class:
More experienced than his other engineering counterparts, this student has started participating in the class discussions, throwing in his "comment" or "observations" on the case-study in question by pointing out some technical aspect of the issue, while trying to embellish his comment with some management buzz words like "portfolio", "economies of scale" etc so that it is more palatable to the majority. This student usually provides his invaluable contribution only once or twice during the class, after which he gets back to the research paper he was reading for the meeting with his advisor, or the novel that he had to look up from at the most thrilling climaxes.

Observe that the gender used for the engineering student in general is not coz of a bias in my mind, but a safe assumption on my part that the engineering student in question would be male nine times out of ten (because this is Georgia Tech!!).

3. The MBA student who was a techie in some previous birth:
This student appears to be the most attentive in the class, coz to him it's obvious that he is probably the only one who's following the discussion in it's totality. It is not sure why he left engineering (probably the people at his old job told him that he was upper management material, coz he was spending more time hanging out with his boss than working on his seat!!), but he considers himself as an authority on all matters technical, and all things relating to business. Never the one to forget manners, this type always starts its monologue with "In my *humble* opinion blah blah blah ....." to go on and completely destroy everybody else's argument, albeit not so very humbly. Having conclusively proved themselves the master of that issue, this type does not sit back and relish the victory. Rather, they will wait attentively to jump on the next opportunity to tear apart any argument, like a hungry lion devouring a deer.

4. The MBA student with a business background:
This type speaks a language that most people don't understand, but it gives an impression of knowledge. Majority of the listeners just hear the keywords like "second-degree price differentiation", "forecasting", "market research" etc brought together by conjunctions that make them sound like intelligent sentences. A lot of people will nod when this type speaks - a sign of support, that no matter what you say we are with you. Usually very active in the class, they become a little reticent when one of the engineering majors starts speaking for too long, and sometimes have to interrupt them with "can you speak in a language understandable by normal people?", usually meaning that you haven't really adorned your sentences with enough management jargon so that it sounds boring (and complex, and over-the-head!!) for the to-be managers.

Apart the above 4 types, there is another kind - these are the ones who come to class a little late, a laptop in hand, and give you a look of coolness like they've just landed from the coolest club in Atlanta while you were wasting time on the stupid case-study deciding what a fictitious manager Joe should do about his fictitious company AlmostBankRupt to save it from going while his fictitious superiors have given him a fictitious deadline to turn things fictitiously around. Even though they aren't interested in fictitious stuff, you know they are going to be surfing the virtual world for the next 1 hour looking at weird posts and videos from anonymous people from around the world!!

So really the management classes have taught me more about psychology than business, but neverthless, they have allowed me to get through all the technical classes by providing that much needed spice every day :D

The Spring Wedding II

2007-04-01T01:28:00.000-04:00

Continuing the saga of love, emotions and melodrama, aka, my brother's wedding, I would like to recall a famous statement by someone - "Every wedding has a drunkard, a jerk
and an asshole!" Well my brother's wedding was no different - it was the real deal in that sense :) I wouldn't elaborate on who played those three roles, but I just wanted to point out that the above statement is a very keen and accurate observation.

Well with 4 days to go for the marriage, the guests started arriving. The first to reach was Mike - my brother's friend from work who flew in from the US. I went to pick him from the airport in Delhi, and as his flight was supposed to reach in the morning, I had to make the drive overnight (it's roughly 6 hours from Ludhiana to Delhi, depending on who's driving of course!). So the taxi comes to pick me up at 2 am, and it's the most run down Toyota Qualis that I've ever seen! Well,there was nothing that I could do at 2 in the morning, so I swallowed my anger and got in the backseat. In spite of the rickety car, I slept pretty much the whole way - you can tell when you are tired! Mike's flight had already landed by the time I reached the airport. As he came to the arrivals section, I waved at him, and it took him a couple of seconds to recognize me even though we had met a few months back in California. 30 hours is a helluva long journey, and that too for someone stepping foot outside the US for the first time. Poor guy, little did he know that the most trying part of his journey had just begun!

He had asked to stop at a hotel so he could get a shower before we drove to Ludhiana, and from the little survey I had done, people had told me to get out of Delhi before getting a hotel, and also that there were decent hotels right out of Delhi on the Delhi-Ludhiana highway. Well, we stopped at the first hotel after the bypass as it had been over an hour since we had been driving, and it turned out to be one of the most rundown hotels I had seen - more like a youth hostel. I had to make a decision here - whether to shop around for better hotels and end up with something better (which I wasn't sure of after I saw this one), or to take the darned room and let Mike have a shower (or a bucket-and-a-mug that he calls it now :) ) so we could start for Ludhiana sooner. I decided in favor of the latter, but only when I actually got into the room, and Mike got into the bathroom, that I realized how bad the hotel room actually was! The curtains and the carpet were torn, the TV remote didn't work, the sheets were dirty, and well, in short, it seemed like the room hadn't been used in weeks. I didn't know then but I came to know later that even the water in the restroom wasn't clean. But well, I played along as well as I could, explaining to Mike that this was a decent hotel, and even though he must have been disgusted, he took everything very sportingly. I figured - if he takes all this on his first day in India , then he can take anything that follows on the trip :) Good reasoning, but I bet he wanted to kill me that day!!!

And did I mention - the air-conditioning in the taxi didn't work either!!

Anyways, 6 hours of a rickety ride in a rundown Qualis with no air-conditioning, and Mike was all set for his first Indian experience. I had taught him on the way how to say Sat Sri Akal, hello, hi, thank u etc., and of course some curse words in Punjabi :) Back home, he greeted my parents with a Sat Sri Akal in perfect Punjabi accent. It was funny coz they were kinda unprepared for this, and were gonna say hello how're u etc. - stuff that they aren;t used to at all. That night we went for some shopping, and didn't let Mike sleep so that he wouldn't be jet-lagged. Some day it was for the American!!!

So this was Wednesday night, and time for the first ceremony of the wedding - a kirtan that was supposed to start at 2 am!! Now I know that the Gurus recommended the Amrit Vela, early morning twilight hours before sunrise, for meditation, but I'm pretty sure this wasn't the way they intended it to happen. Most people who made it to the kirtan didn't sleep the whole night, and would have gone home to sleep for a gud 4-5 hours before going to work. I myself wasn't up till 11:30 the next morning. Probably having something at 6-7 am would have made more sense - but then I'm not the authority when it comes to decisions like this :p

I think I'll need a good 4-5 blogs to actually reach the wedding day!! Seriously - after the trip it felt I had been away for more than a month, just cause of the number of things that happened, and the emotional roller coasters that it made me go through!!!

Spring Wedding I

2007-03-31T01:20:00.000-04:00

Posting after a short hiatus - had gone to India for my elder brother's wedding and returned to the US just today. Couldn't think of a better way to kill the jet-lagged night than to collect my thoughts about the trip and the wedding.

If I had to describe the trip in one word, it would be "hectic"!! Me and my brother, who lives in Atlanta, reached India 10 days before the wedding day. We had been told that most of the preparations for the wedding were complete, and we had to just show up and shop for our own clothes. You would think that 10 days would be more than enough to do that, right? Wrong! When in India they say that they're ready, it usually means there would be just enough time for everything to be done if you cut your sleep to 4 hours a night.

Well, it took us 7 days to figure out my brother's wedding dress - an elaborate Achkan (a traditional Indian dress that has its roots in the Mughal period) , a red turban - that is a distinctly Punjabi way to celebrate any big occasion, and a pair of intricately embroidered Punjabi Juttis - actually we bought two of them but that story will come later.

Apart from the dresses, the list of things to be done included distributing the wedding cards, making sure everything was tip-top for the three ceremonies to be held back-to-back in 2 days, while entertaining a White American friend of my brother who decided to grace the big occasion - he deserves another post for the grit and courage he showed while in India :)

The cards - well the guest list itself told a story about how the society runs in India. Apart from the usual milieu of family, friends and relatives, also on the list were people who were supposed to be related to us in a way only Indian society can figure - my uncle's sister's husband's brother's family and children, children of children of cousins of my grand parents. Not surprisingly, we have a unique name for every relation, no matter how many steps removed they are from us. Apart from the apparently related people, we had also invited people from the college which my mom runs as a principal - it included the whole teaching and non-teaching staff, the lab assistants, the clerical staff, and also the whole entourage of mali's, chowkidars, sweepers and other class 4 employees that exist in the colonial like system of government colleges in India. The amazing thing for me was that all these people actually seemed excited about the wedding, and EVERYONE showed up for the wedding and probably danced more than our family! Tells you something about the workplace in India, and about the absence of any boundaries between work and personal life.

I was assigned the cards for the staff, and packed off with one of the staff members to distribute the 100 odd cards. It took us 2 full days to go through the whole list, and I visited areas in Ludhiana that I never knew existed. It was an eye opening experience for me in more ways than one. Firstly, the people. Because I was the principal's son who was visiting, everybody wanted to leave a good impression on me. I would be invited for a cup of coffee, tea or thanda everywhere I went, and when I refused citing the number of cards still to be distributed, people would repeat the offer a couple of times, and then chide me for not taking up on it. But I would observe the look of relief once it was clear that I wouldn't be coming in after all. The amazing thing was that there were only a couple of exceptions to the above pattern in the hundred cards that I distributed. I started to get irritated with the hypocrisy of the whole thing, and I actually wanted to tell some people that well, I know you don't really want me in there, so let's not waste each other's time by going through the whole routine!

Another observation I made while roaming the streets of Ludhiana looking for the addresses was the selfishness with which buildings had been made. Sometimes to reach someone's house, I had to drive over gravel roads, pebbles, pothole laden brick roads and even kutcha paths to reach a mansion like house with gate-keepers, dogs, and with the lawns landscaped!! I haven't been able to paint a good picture of the huge contrast between the roads and those houses on the roads, but you have to see it to believe it. What I wonder is how come those obviously rich people not coax the government into action to build those roads. Every once in a while I would come across a good road that had been apparently built by some houseowner, but it would last probably the length of 2 houses. The thought that people weren't ready to spend some money or use their connections for something that would benefit not only them but everybody, was pretty disturbing. Kind of gives some clues to what's wrong with the country in general - nobody wants to invest in something that helps everybody (even if they are themselves the ones to be benefited) and propel the society forward as a whole.

I have lots more to add to the trip - will have to break this one into two or three posts. Time to hit the sack for now - Buenos Noches!

bulla ki janaa....

2007-03-08T00:53:00.000-05:00

Finally, I enter the blog world.

You may want to ask- what took me so long? Most of my friends who write have been on the blogspace for years now. I have been reading other people's stuff for n number of years. But yet I didn't take the big leap. Why?

Perhaps, I didn't have anything to say to the world.

Perhaps, I was content listening to other people.

Perhaps, the whole universe was conspiring to subdue me intto silence for some great cause.

Or perhaps, I was just too lazy.

The last guess might be your best bet given the quality that has been carefully nurtured by the best researchers and is now blossoming as I enter the third year of graduate school. Procrastination. I will refer you to PhD Comics by Jorge Cham for more interesting habits of this weird creature aka the grad student.

You may want to ask - now that I'm here do I have anything specific to say to the world? Well, coming to think of it, not really. I do not plan any great revolution on the blogspace, am not here to inspire people to do great things (or stupid ones at that, though it might be an interesting side-effect), have nothing to add to the million arguments that are taking place, or have taken place, all over the internet, have nothing against my fellow countrymen, or against the Americans, or the Iraqis for that matter.

So why am I here? Is it for the give and take of the ideas that I'm here? Or is it so that I can inflate my ego when I defend an abstract argument and 5 other people buy into my line of reasoning? Or is it to open my mind to a new form of communication that seems strange to me because of its ability to address hundreds of unknown people?

People have told me that I need direction in life. Perhaps, I need someone to throw ideas at. Perhaps, I need the world to hear whatever I have been holding in me. Or perhaps ... I'm just too darn sleepy!

I think I need to recoup to spout more frustration at the world :)

Gracias - Buenos Noches!